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ABSTRACT
From respectively 1852–1938 and 1863–1897, Guyana and New Caledonia received tens of thousands of men and hundreds of women sentenced to hard labour, deportation or relegation on their soil. This article aims to compare the social history of these two penal colonies, something which has never been done specifically. Transportation and its effects on the populating of both countries are here analysed in context: in the colonial situation experienced by the two territories, in contact with other populations, whether indigenous, imported or colonial. Subjected to the same rural utopia defended by the 1854 act on convict transportation, the two colonies nonetheless evolved very differently. It is this we shall be investigating in a close field study. With this ‘ground level’ approach, we hope to reveal how original colonial societies were formed out of these particular and remarkable penal experiments.
Acknowledgements
We would like to express our sincere gratitude to Christophe Dervieux (Archives of New Caledonia), as well as Deborah Pope and Mathilde Lefebvre (CNRS) for their significant contribution to the final phase of this publication.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1 The machinery of the different institutions covered by the generic term of ‘bagnes’, harbour bagnes, colonial bagnes, military bagnes and child bagnes, was the subject of a recent work/synthesis by Pierre, Le temps des bagnes.
2 See, for example, Blosseville, Histoire des colonies pénales. Many contemporary studies of French transportation also deal with the British experience. These include Franceschi, De l’organisation locale de la transportation and Brouilhet, De la transportation.
3 See among others: Pain, Colonisation pénale: un problème colonial; Cor, Contribution à l’étude des questions coloniales; Calmel, La colonisation pénale and Mimande, Nos colonies pénitentiaires.
4 And published as a book in 1923: Londres, Au bagne.
5 Foucault, Surveiller et punir.
6 Perrot, Les ombres de l’histoire.
7 Zysberg, Les galériens.
8 In the form of articles in two works edited by Petit, La prison, le bagne et l’histoire and Histoire des galères, bagnes et prisons.
9 Pierre, Bagnards, la terre de grande punition.
10 Donet-Vincent, De soleil et de silences.
11 Cornuel, «Guyane française: du “paradis” à l’enfer du bagne».
12 Godfroy-Tayard de Borms, Bagnards.
13 Sanchez, À perpétuité. See also Rodriguez, “The Experience of Relegation in the French Penal Colonies (1885–1953).”
14 Barbançon, L’archipel des forçats.
15 See in particular: Baronnet and Chalou, Communards en Nouvelle-Calédonie; Pérennès, Déportés et forçats de la Commune; Mailhé, Déportation en Nouvelle-Calédonie; Ouennoughi, Mémoires, histoire des déplacements forcés and Sellal, Caledoun, terre de bagne.
16 Krakovitch, Les femmes bagnardes.
17 Toth, «The Lords of discipline».
18 Merle, Expériences coloniales.
19 Coquet, “La ville et le bagne.”
20 Petit et al., Histoire des galères, bagnes et prisons and Merle, Expériences coloniales.
21 Forster, France and Botany Bay.
22 Atkinson, The Europeans in Australia.
23 Coquet, “La ville et le bagne.”
24 Bentham, The Works of Jeremy Bentham, vol. 4.
25 Beaumont and Tocqueville, Du système pénitentiaire aux Etats-Unis.
26 Hirst, Convict Society and its Ennemies.
27 Shaw, Convicts and the Colonies and Nicholas, Convict Workers.
28 Attacks against private property constituted the first cause of condemnation to hard labour before attempted murders and murders, sexual assaults, arson and various kind of frauds. Merle, Expériences coloniales.
29 Ibid.
30 Mam-Lam-Fouck, La Guyane française au temps de l’esclavage, 118.
31 Merle, Expériences coloniales, 63.
32 Ibid., 278.
33 Ibid., 118.
34 ANOM, Notice de la transportation (1866-1867), 30.
35 ANOM, Notice de la transportation (1896-1899), 171.
36 Ibid.
37 From a study of the Notices de la transportation (1852-1912) and ANOM, H2039, H2040, H2041, H2042, H2043.
38 Read more in Sanchez, A perpétuité.
39 Act of 30 May 1854.
40 Cayenne was founded in 1643. It was from this little settlement that France colonised Guyana. In the mid Nineteenth century, there was a population of about 20,000 in Guyana, half of which lived in Cayenne and its neighbourhood.
41 The decision was taken on 25 January 1865 by the Governor of New Caledonia. Journal officiel de la Nouvelle-Calédonie, 1865.
42 These measures would be reasserted in the decree of 1880 which will be mentioned later. On the other hand, transportees’ right to a wage, even low, was abolished by a decree in 1891 which revised the disciplinary system of transportation.
43 This measure recalls the ‘system’ of Australian penal colonies where convicts could be found places as servants or farmworkers with private people.
44 ANOM, Notice de la (1880-1881).
45 ANOM, Notice de la (1886-1895).
46 Decree regulating the situation of transportees with land concessions in penal colonies, cited in the order of 23 January 1879, Journal officiel de la Nouvelle-Calédonie, 1879, p. 23.
47 In particular, due to the voting of the law on the relegation of repeat offenders (1885 Act), with the first convoys arriving in Guyana in 1887, and the resumption of convoys of European convicts in Guyana from 1887 onwards (see supra).
48 Like other ‘old’ colonies, such as Guadeloupe, Martinique or Reunion Island, Guyana had a Conseil Général elected by free settlers since 1828, a form of political representation which would serve as a model during discussions on the creation of a Conseil Général in New Caledonia in 1885.
49 By decree 16 February 1878: ANOM, Notice de la transportation (1878-1879).
50 Report from the Governor of New Caledonia to the President of the Republic, 12 December 1874. Appendix 1 of the order promulgating the organic decree of 12 December 1874 concerning the government of New Caledonia, Journal Officiel de la Nouvelle-Calédonie, 1 March 1875, p. 112–7.
51 Ibid., 117.
52 Ibid.
53 By decree on 16 March 1880: ANOM, Notice de la transportation (1880-1881).
54 Members of the Maroni municipal committee were not elected therefore but appointed by the Governor on recommendation of the director of the prison authorities. Thus very close complicity was established between the town and the prison authorities. For example, the president of the Maroni municipal committee, who took the title of Mayor of the town, acted simultaneously as commander of the camp of Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni and its subsidiary camps and as assistant director of the prison authorities. In reality, relations between local s and prison authorities were sometimes conflictual but it is undeniable that the 1880 decree actually made Saint-Laurent a ‘necessary branch of the prison authorities’ (expression taken from: ANOM, H2022, annotation by the director of the prison authorities to the report of the assistant inspector of the Colonies on 15 January 1924). The possibility of establishing such a system was never discussed in New Caledonia.
55 ANOM, H2022, report by the inspector of Colonies, April 1901.
56 These included in particular exoneration from the taxes which the other Guyanese municipalities owed the colony’s government since the adoption of the 15 October decree (notably on the revenue from the sugar mill at Saint-Maurice, to be paid by the Moroni prison town). For more details, see Coquet, “La ville et le bagne,” 190–7.
57 ANOM, H2022, annotations by the Governor of French Guyana to the report of 3rd class inspector of colonies Ferlande, concerning the investigation of the service of M. Barre, mayor of Saint-Laurent-du-Moroni.
58 Imported thanks to economic agreements made between France and Great Britain.
59 Let us mention here the ambitious project of Clare Anderson entitled ‘Carceral Archipelago’ which aims to study the penal worlds from the perspective of a connected history and in the very long term.
60 For a more in-depth study of relations between Cayenne and Saint-Laurent-du-Moroni in the years from 1850 to 1900, see Coquet, “La ville et le bagne,” 198–207.
61 By Arrêté, 28 December 1875.
62 Backouche and Montel, “La fabrique ordinaire de la ville,” 5–9.
63 Made up originally of a few huts belonging to penal concessionaires termed ‘Annamites’, from the Indochinese colonies, the district called the “Chinese village” spread during the Nineteenth century. Chinese migrants came and settled there. Ex-convicts of all origins lived there or went there regularly. A quay was built and its alleyways attracted a large population of convicts, gold-diggers, traders, landladies, etc. It completely escaped the authorities' control, despite the latters’ efforts to limit its expansion and the frequently illegal practices that went on there. See Coquet, “La ville et le bagne,” 281–93.
64 Merle, Expériences coloniales, 196.
65 Ibid., 222.
66 Nickname given to the descendants of convicts.
67 Coquet, “La ville et le bagne,” 366–70.
68 It should be noted that the same festivities organised by the town of Cayenne do not appear to have given rise to the same display of segregation between the free and penal populations: see in particular Voituret “Représentation des sociabilités sportives,” 17–35.
69 Coquet, “La ville et le bagne,” 362–3.
70 Barbançon, Le pays du non dit.
71 It should be noted that for Jean-Marie Tjibaou the notion of ‘victims of history’ did not concern the Kanak but all those who had been driven or forced to settle in New Caledonia in the Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries. From the Kanak point of view, it was a question of recognising and accepting the legitimacy of their presence in the country. Nanville les Roches round table, 8 July 1981.
72 Mam-Lam-Fouck, La Guyane française de la colonisation à la départementalisation.
73 Jolivet, “Image de Guyane entre réduction et cloisonnement.” See also, by the same author, “Mémoires guyanaises.”
74 This is a derogatory term for convicts.
75 Interview with a person from Saint Laurent made by Les Voix de la Ville association, November 2012.